May 1940 War Cabinet Crisis
In May 1940, during the Second World War, the British war cabinet was split on the question of whether to make terms with Nazi Germany or to continue hostilities. The main protagonists were the prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the foreign secretary, Viscount Halifax. The dispute escalated to crisis point and threatened the continuity of the Churchill government. With the British Expeditionary Force in retreat to Dunkirk and the fall of France seemingly imminent, Halifax believed that the government should explore the possibility of a negotiated peace settlement. His hope was that Hitler's ally, the still-neutral Italian dictator Mussolini, would broker an agreement. When a memorandum proposing this approach was discussed at the War Cabinet on 27 May, Churchill opposed it and urged his colleagues to fight on without negotiations. He was supported in the war cabinet by its two Labour Party members, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, and also by the Secretary of Sta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five UK Parliament constituency, constituencies. Ideologically an Economic liberalism, economic liberal and British Empire, imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924. Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire to Spencer family, a wealthy, aristocratic family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British Raj, Br ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two Major party, major List of political parties in the United Kingdom, political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs (British political party), Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals (UK), Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Ewart Gladstone, William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule Movement, Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, 1906 general election. Under Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed Liberal welfare reforms, reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the Leader of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Invasion Of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. The Soviets invaded Poland on 17 September. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. The invasion is also known in Poland as the September campaign ( pl, kampania wrześniowa) or 1939 defensive war ( pl, wojna obronna 1939 roku, links=no) and known in Germany as the Poland campaign (german: Überfall auf Polen, Polenfeldzug). German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west the morning after the Gleiwitz incident. Slovak military forces ad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anglo-Polish Military Alliance
The military alliance between the United Kingdom and Poland was formalised by the Anglo-Polish Agreement in 1939, with subsequent addenda of 1940 and 1944, for mutual assistance in case of a military invasion from Nazi Germany, as specified in a secret protocol.Keith Sword. "British Reactions to the Soviet Occupation of Eastern Poland in September 1939". ''The Slavonic and East European Review'', Vol. 69, No. 1 (Jan., 1991), pp. 81-101. Background The United Kingdom had been attempting to create a four-way alliance to contain Germany, with France, Poland and the Soviet Union. Poland's Jozef Beck was disturbed by the prospect of any alliance with the Soviets. He also feared the reaction of Berlin to the four-way alliance, which might be seen as the encirclement of Germany. Beck, however, saw an opportunity and so he proposed a secret agreement on consultation to British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that was received on 24th March, 1939. When questioned by Halifax, Polish Foreign ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Italy. It provided "cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory" of First Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia, despite the existence of a 1924 alliance agreement and 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic, for which it is also known as the Munich Betrayal (; ). Most of Europe celebrated the Munich agreement, which was presented as a way to prevent a major war on the continent. The four powers agreed to German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the German annexation of the Czechoslovak borderland areas named the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly Sudeten Germans, ethnic Germans, lived. Adolf Hitler announced that it was his last territorial claim in Northern Europ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Appeasement
Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the UK governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald (in office: 1929–1935), Stanley Baldwin (in office: 1935–1937) and (most notably) Neville Chamberlain (in office: 1937–1940) towards Nazi Germany (from 1933) and Fascist Italy (established in 1922) between 1935 and 1939. Under British pressure, appeasement of Nazism and Fascism also played a role in French foreign policy of the period, but was always much less popular than in the United Kingdom. At the beginning of the 1930s, appeasing concessions were widely seen as desirable—due to the anti-war reaction to the trauma of World War I (1914–1918), second thoughts about the perceived vindictive treatment by some of Germany in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and a perception that fascism ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, from May 1923 to January 1924, from November 1924 to June 1929, and from June 1935 to May 1937. Born to a prosperous family in Bewdley, Worcestershire, Baldwin was educated at Hawtreys, Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the family iron and steel making business and entered the House of Commons in 1908 as the member for Bewdley, succeeding his father Alfred. He served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1917–1921) and President of the Board of Trade (1921–1922) in the coalition ministry of David Lloyd George and then rose rapidly: in 1922, Baldwin was one of the prime movers in the withdrawal of Conservative support from Lloyd George; he subsequently became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Bonar Law's Conserva ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Labour Organisation
The National Labour Organisation, also known as the National Labour Committee or simply as National Labour, was a British political group formed after the 1931 creation of the National Government to co-ordinate the efforts of the supporters of the government who had come from the Labour Party. The party leaders were Ramsay MacDonald (1931–1937) and his son Malcolm MacDonald (1937–1945). The most prominent Labour Party member involved in the government was the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. National Labour sponsored parliamentary candidates, but it did not consider itself a full political party as it had no policy distinctive from that of the government which it supported. After Ramsay MacDonald's death, the group continued in existence under his son Malcolm until it was wound up on the eve of the 1945 general election; its newsletter ceased publication two years later. History 1931 general election After Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Governme ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Liberal Party (UK, 1931)
The National Liberal Party, known until 1948 as the Liberal National Party, was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom from 1931 to 1968. It broke away from the Liberal Party, and later co-operated and merged with the Conservative Party. History The Liberal Nationals evolved as a distinctive group within the Liberal Party when the main body of Liberals maintained in office the second Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald, who lacked a majority in Parliament. A growing number of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon declared their total opposition to this policy and began to co-operate more closely with the Conservative Party, even advocating a policy of replacing free trade with tariffs, anathema to many traditional Liberals. By June 1931 three Liberal MPs — Simon, Ernest Brown and Robert Hutchison (a former Lloyd George ministry-supporting coalitionist of the earlier National Liberal Party) — resigned their party's whip and sat as independents. When the Labour Gove ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Government (United Kingdom)
In the politics of the United Kingdom, a National Government is a coalition of some or all of the major political parties. In a historical sense, it refers primarily to the governments of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain which held office from 1931 until 1940. The all-party coalitions of H. H. Asquith and David Lloyd George in the First World War and of Winston Churchill in the Second World War were sometimes referred to as National Governments at the time, but are now more commonly called Coalition Governments. The term "National Government" was chosen to dissociate itself from negative connotations of the earlier Coalitions. Churchill's brief 1945 Caretaker Government also called itself a National Government and in terms of party composition was very similar to the 1931–1940 ones. Crisis of 1931 The Wall Street Crash heralded the global Great Depression and Britain was hit, although not as badly as most countries. The government was trying ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1935 United Kingdom General Election
The 1935 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 14 November 1935 and resulted in a large, albeit reduced, majority for the National Government now led by Stanley Baldwin of the Conservative Party. The greatest number of members, as before, were Conservatives, while the National Liberal vote held steady. The much smaller National Labour vote also held steady but the resurgence in the main Labour vote caused over a third of their MPs, including National Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, to lose their seats. Labour, under what was then regarded internally as the caretaker leadership of Clement Attlee following the resignation of George Lansbury slightly over a month before, made large gains over their very poor showing at the 1931 general election, and saw their highest share of the vote yet. They made a net gain of over a hundred seats, thus reversing much of the ground lost in 1931. The Liberals continued a slow political decline, with their leader, Sir Herbert ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R99302 Chamberlain
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